WND EXCLUSIVE

9/11 connection to marathon bombings?

Terror leaders of bombers' mosque run hijackers' D.C. mosque

The Boston mosque where the marathon bombers worshipped is owned and run by the same terror-tied groups that own and control the 9/11 mosque in Washington, WND has learned

The founder of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) mosque, moreover, is one of the original leaders of the radical mosque attended by some of the 9/11 hijackers. The founder, Abdurahman Alamoudi, also is a convicted al-Qaida fundraiser now in federal prison.

The chilling connection between America’s worst and second-worst terrorist acts casts serious doubt on media descriptions of the ISB mosque attended by accused marathon terrorists Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as “moderate” and “mainstream.” It also raises suspicions the brothers were radicalized in the mosque.

“The Islamic Society of Boston is an al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood operation,” said FBI veteran John Guandolo, who helped put Alamoudi away as a counterterrorism agent in the bureau’s Washington field office.

In fact, the mosque’s terrorist connections are so extensive that Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick at the last minute revoked an invitation he extended to its imam to attend the interfaith memorial service for marathon victims at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston.

However, ISB’s deed is held by the North American Islamic Trust, sister group of the Islamic Society of North America – both of which have been identified by the Justice Department as unindicted terrorist co-conspirators. Despite the designation, President Obama has invited ISNA officials to visit the White House.

NAIT also owns Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Fall Church, Va., where at least three of the hijackers worshipped before they attacked the Pentagon. Dar al-Hijrah also hired the al-Qaida cleric, Anwar Awlaki, who privately ministered to the hijackers, and later, after fleeing the U.S., encouraged young Muslim men in America to use pressure-cooker bombs like the ones the Tsarnaev brothers used to attack Americans.

ISB is managed, moreover, by the Muslim American Society, which the FBI believes to be the main U.S. front for the radical Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Cairo, Egypt. ISB’s board directors also sit on the board of the Boston branch of MAS.

Likewise, MAS runs the 9/11 mosque in the Washington suburbs. Dar al-Hijrah’s leadership consists of members of the board of MAS, which is headquartered in nearby Alexandria, Va.

Despite the Muslim Brotherhood’s known husbanding of Hamas and al-Qaida, Obama has sent billions of dollars in U.S. aid to its new regime in Cairo. The Egyptian regime is controlled by the Brotherhood under the banner “Freedom and Justice Party.” In the wake of the Boston bombings, the party’s vice president, Essam al-Erian, linked the attacks to the global Islamic jihad against the West.

ISB was founded and initially led by Alamoudi, who the U.S. Treasury cites as one of al-Qaida’s top fundraisers in America. He later became a leader in the Dar al-Hijrah mosque and, according to investigative reporter Paul Sperry’s book “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington,” officed out of the same Alexandria building as MAS. Guandolo and other federal investigators believe Alamoudi, now serving a 23-year federal sentence, was the leader, or “masul,” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

ISB was founded in 1982 largely with Saudi money; Dar al-Hijrah was founded a decade later with millions of dollars provided by the Saudi Embassy.

MAS, which has 50 chapters across the country, also runs a Detroit-based correspondence college called Islamic American University, whose former chairman is Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian-born spiritual leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood. The imam has authorized attacks on U.S. soldiers and is barred from entering the U.S. He vows the Brotherhood will “conquer America.”

Al-Qaradawi also served as an ISB board member until 2001. After 9/11, his name no longer appeared in mosque tax records.

MAS’s website says the late Egyptian jihadist Hassan al-Banna is “the founder and leader of a great Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood.” In a 1947 letter to the faithful, titled “Toward the Light,” the Brotherhood founder called for “reinforcing the armed forces, and increasing the number of youth groups; igniting in them the spirit of Islamic jihad.”

Guandolo says MAS runs “jihadi training camps” for youth across the country as part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Special Section, or military wing.

The Tsarnaev brothers’ uncle said in various interviews that Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radicalization started at ISB’s satellite mosque in Cambridge, Mass. – whose imam, Sheik Basyouny Nehela, sits on the board of MAS-Boston.

The mosque spokesman denied the brothers were radicalized at the mosque.

“Radicalization did not happen in the mosque,” ISB’s Vali asserted.

However, other Muslims recently have been radicalized at the Cambridge mosque – including at least three known terrorists:

Aafia Siddiqui, an al-Qaida agent who ambushed U.S. military officers while in custody in Afghanistan and is now serving an 86-year federal sentence;

Tarek Mehanna, who is doing 17 years in federal prison for conspiring to use automatic weapons to execute American shoppers at a suburban Boston mall; and

Ahmad Abousamra, Mehanna’s co-conspirator who fled to Syria after the FBI charged him with terrorism.

Abousamra is the son of a former vice president of MAS-Boston, Dr. Abdul-Badi Abousramra.

Vali claimed the older Tsarnaev brother was asked to leave the mosque when he expressed “radical” ideas. In fact, Tamerlan Tsarnaev never was kicked out of the mosque, and mosque officials never contacted the FBI after they allegedly scolded him for radical outbursts during sermons. And he continued to attend Friday prayer services.

“We wish we all could have done something to prevent this,” said ISB Senior Imam Suhaib Webb, referring to his congregants’ gruesome attacks on marathon spectators.

“Our focus will remain on leaving no stone uncovered in finding any other suspects connected to the bombings,” he added in a statement.

Given Webb’s own radical background, investigators aren’t holding their breath.

“The guy is bad news,” a senior federal law enforcement official working the Boston case told WND.

Webb, a Muslim convert, studied Islam at the Muslim Brotherhood’s Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. In addition to helming ISB, he also serves as the educational director for MAS.

In a 2012 sermon delivered in English, the cleric justified the concept of jihad and the use of violence against non-Muslims, arguing “a Muslim is allowed to fight.”

Added Webb: “You’re given permission to defend yourself if your life, your liberty or your pursuit of justice are threatened.”